Sunday, March 27, 2011

Yes, after 3 years of cold, cloud, not quite so cold, travel, cloud, work, pub lunches, bad pizza, more cloud, rain, snow, more cloud, more work, more travel etc etc, I'M GOING HOME! That's right - as of 5 May, I'll be back in the Mother City, back to my old haunts with my old friends and enjoying and missing my Cambridge friends, instead of the other way around.

I'll be doing a post-doc in the computer science department at UCT. When people ask me exactly what it is I'm going to do I find it hard to explain (possibly because I don't precisely know yet myself), but you can read the job advert here.

I've decided that nanny states are a real pain. Time was, people just made sure they had something put away for when they couldn't work any more. Now governments have very complicated rules by which you get a tax break if you put money into a pension scheme which you then can't withdraw from and can only spend in certain ways, and it creates a huge amount of red tape. Frankly dealing with red tape is the most stressful part about moving back - the actual moving is stressful but a doddle by comparison.

Anyway, if you're friend/acquaintance in the UK and want to see me before I leave, get in touch; and if you're a Cape Town friend/acquaintance I'll see you soon!